Cold Power

In experiment several methods work successfully to produce electricity other than by fuel or waterfall. Rising and falling tides contain huge power; hence a project is under way for dams and spillways where Maine and New Brunswick meet at Passamaquoddy Bay. The sun pours billions of heat units upon the earth; hence an experimental sun engine at Mount Wilson Observatory. Volcanic regions are hot just below the ground surface; hence on the west U. S. Coast and in Italy pipes are driven down, water poured into them, useful steam taken out. The surface of tropical waters is, much warmer than the depths; hence the work of Georges Claude, member of the French Academy of Sciences at Havana, to utilize temperature to run turbines.

Last week an aspirant to the French Academy of Sciences, Dr. H. Barjot, printed in Paris his suggestion to the Academy of a temperature-differential power plant the inverse of Academician Claude's. Dr. Barjot would generate his power in Polar regions where water under the ice is 32DEG F. (freezing) or warmer and the air above 20DEG below zero or colder. He would pump sub-ice water into a surface tank partially filled with butane or some other hydrocarbon of low vaporization point. In the tank the ice water would freeze and release it? comparative heat; the heat would volatilize the butane; the gaseous butane would run a low-pressure turbine. To condense the butane to liquid, after it had rotated the turbine, he would pass it through brine made from the ocean waters. And so the pumping, power-generating would go on. In theory the process is feasible. In experiment it has proved workable.